About Me

I'm a director of Maidenhead United Football Club.
For ten seasons one of my roles at the club was to produce the match programme.
The aim of this blog was to write football related articles for publication in the match programme. In particular I like to write about the representation of football in popular culture, specifically music, film/TV and literature.
I also write about matches I attend which generally feature Maidenhead United.

Sunday, 18 December 2016

Only one manager has
won back to back World Cups, Vittorio Pozzo, who led Italy to consecutive wins
in 1934 and 1938 which established the Azurri as the dominant European national
team. Known as il Vecchio Maestro (the old master), the foundation of Pozzo’s
triumphs were in his Metodo formation which emphasised the need for strong
defence, presaging the Catenaccio style for which the Italians became renowned
in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Pozzo grew up in
Turin in the late nineteenth century and was an academic who studied languages.
As well as travelling abroad to study he played football in France, Switzerland
and England. In 1906 he returned to Italy and helped to found Torino where he
spent the last five years of his playing career, becoming technical director in
1912. He led the national team at the 1912 and 1924 Olympics, winning bronze in
Paris at the latter games. In between in World War One he served in the Italian
Alpini an elite mountain warfare military
corps. Following the death of his wife in 1924 he moved to Milan and managed AC
combining his job with the Rossoneri
with writing for La Stampa.

At the end of the
decade Pozzo became the national team’s Commissario
Tecnico, the first to be appointed to the run the Azurri free of interference
from the FA. He immediately won the first Central European
International Švehla Cup in 1930, beating Austria’s wunderteam led by Hugo
Meisl (MWMMF 5#) who had created the competition. This encouraged him to implement his Metodo
(Method) formation which he had been devising since watching Manchester United's centre-half Charlie
Roberts at the turn of the century. Influenced by Meisl and Herbert Chapman
(MWMMF #4), Pozzo discarded the traditional Cambridge 2-3-5 formation and
looked to strengthen the midfield. However rather than Chapman’s WM, he came up
with a WW or 2-3-2-3. This relied less on the centre-half and more on the
inside forwards, withdrawn from the front five, with Internazionale star Giuseppe
Meazza and Giovanni Ferrari perfect for the role to spearhead swift counter
attacks backed by a numerical superiority in midfield.

These homegrown
players were complemented controversially by Oriundi, South American born
Italian nationals, including the centre half playmaker Luisito Monti who played
for Argentina in the 1930 World Cup final. Pozzo shrugging off the criticism
referring to their Italian army service saying: "If they can die for
Italy, they can also play for Italy".

Authoritarian but
paternalistic and attentive, Pozzo refereed every small-sided training match
himself; never hesitating to send a player off if he deemed it necessary. If
two players were not getting along personally, he made them roommates in the
team’s next hotel.

Inevitably his reign
was influenced by the fascist dictatorship led by Mussolini which governed
Italy and he worked alongside Giorgio Vaccaro – a general from the fascist militia during that
first World Cup campaign which was held in Italy, the finals being coloured by
allegations of weak refereeing said to favour the hosts.

Pozzo’s team moved
comfortably into the quarter-finals where they contested a fierce battle with
Spain which ended 1-1 after extra time. A replay was ordered for the following
day with the teams missing eleven players between them through injury, the
Italians scoring the only goal of the game. In the semi-final Italy met Austria
and again won by a single goal which came early in the match from oriundi Enrico
Guaita scoring from close range with their opponents crying foul after Meazza
had fallen over the goalkeeper.

In the final, Italy looked
to have met their match in Czechoslovakia team, who took the lead with twenty
minutes to go and looked set for victory. Pozzo responded by switching the
positions of forwards Schiavio and Guaita.

This simple ploy gave the Italians a
way back into the game, and sparked a spell of relentless pressure that
eventually led to the equaliser through another oriundi Raimondo Orsi with nine
minutes. They won the Cup in extra time when a hobbling Meazza, all but left
alone to drift in and out of the match, picked out Guaita from the wing. The Roma
midfielder slid the ball to Schiavio, who just managed to poke in the winner
five minutes into the extra period.

On the back of the
World Cup success, Pozzo was awarded the title of Commendatore for
greatness in his profession, and more significantly in the context of the
global game encouraged a move from attacking to the counter attacking systems
which dominate to this day.

In 1936 Italy again
beat Austria in major finals, this time to win the 1936 Olympics in
Berlin having found a new goalscoring partner for Meazza in Lazio’s Silvio
Piola. Pozzo then headed for France for the 1938 World Cup aiming to become not
only the first manager to defend the World Cup but also the first to win
outside of his own country.

After beating the hosts in Paris in the quarter-finals,
the Italians travelled south to Marseilles to meet Brazil in the last four.

Pozzo
learned that the Brazilians were so confident of appearing in the final in
Paris that they had requisitioned the only airplane from Marseilles to Paris on
the day after the semi-final. Pozzo asked if they would allow Italy to use the
plane should they win only to be told "it is not possible because to Paris
we will go, because we will beat you in Marseilles".

This provided the
ideal motivation for Pozzo’s players and they won 2–1 headed back to Paris by
train for the final which they won 4–2 against Hungary (below).

Pozzo continued to develop his tactics moving the
centre-half into a defensive three, in a revised formation known as the Sistema (system). As football
was interrupted by World War Two Pozzo secretly became involved with the
antifascist resistance, helping supply food to partisan rebels and assisting
the escape of Allied prisoners. He then ended his career as national coach at
the 1948 London Olympics. He followed the Italian national team for La Stampa
until his death in 1968

Sunday, 4 December 2016

Having spent the last few chapters
of this series in central Europe we now head south to the Mediterranean,
starting with the story of ‘El Mister’ who coached the first team outside the
British Isles to victory over England and transformed Spanish football.

Born in Wolverhampton he had a distinguished
career as an outside right forward in the Edwardian era having spells in the
first division with Blackburn Rovers and Middlesbrough. Whilst with Boro he won
five England caps in 1909. Injury forced his retirement in 1914 and he was
appointed coach of the German Olympic team, unfortunately the subsequent outbreak
of World War One meant Pentland was interned in Ruhleben camp along with up to
5,000 other prisoners. Whilst there he organised cup and league competitions
for his fellow inmates. There were enough footballers in the camp to make up an
England XI and alongside fellow Middlesbrough and England team mate Steve
Bloomer; Pentland appeared in the triangular Coupe de Allies tournament which
also featured a French and Belgian team. He remained in the camp until the
armistice upon which he returned to England.

Appointed French national coach, he
took them to the semi-final of the 1920 Olympics held in Antwerp. After the
games he moved to Spain where he was to stay for fifteen years and make a lasting
significant impact on the development of the Spanish game.

During five years of internment
Pentland had plenty of time to debate and theorize about football with his
fellow ex professional footballers. This crystallized into a simple motto “Get
the simple things right and the rest will follow.”

Eschewing the English kick and rush
style which was brought by his countrymen to Iberia in the late nineteenth
century, Pentland instead focussed on skill, possession, short passing and
rapid movement, a style that became commonly known as push and run. This
philosophy necessitated a change of formation so Pentland abandoned the
traditional 2-3-5 in favour of a 2-5-3 which made for more creativity in
midfield.

This was tried first at Racing
Santander but after a year he moved on to Athletic Bilbao for the first of two
spells which would transform the history of the Basque team. Los Leones were
the most English of Spanish clubs, with even their red and white striped kit
having originated from Southampton but despite Pentland being the latest in a
long line of English coaches at San Mamés he was to lead the club in turning
their back on their forebears. Using the force of his considerable character,
Pentland introduced his favoured methods of play and won the 1923 Copa Del Rey.
Known in the city as El Bombin, Pentland would invite his players to stamp on
his trademark bowler hat when they won a big game. Addressing him by the more
respectful El Mister, the players were encouraged to be more professional,
being given lessons in how to dress and even how to tie their shoelaces.

Leaving Bilbao in 1925 he led
Atlético Madrid to the 1926 Copa Del Rey final then moved onto Real Oviedo for
a season, returning to Atlético in 1927, where he won the Campeonato Del
Centro, the regional league for clubs in the Madrid area. In 1929 he was coach
alongside manager José María Mateos of the Spanish national team which beat
England 4-3 in Madrid, England’s first ever defeat to a non-British team.

Barcelona won the inaugural La Liga
in 1929 using Pentland’s style of play but in 1930 El Mister claimed the title
for himself, making a triumphant return to Bilbao with an invincible season
which included another Copa Del Rey win. He made it a double double in 1931
(squad pictured above) and went on in the following two seasons to twice defend
the Copa Del Rey and finish runner up twice in La Liga. Going back to Athletico
Madrid in 1934, his third spell there was curtailed by the onset of the Spanish
Civil War and he went back to England.

After a short spell
as manager of Barrow, his career in football ended with the outbreak of World
War Two. His impact on Athletic Bilbao was not forgotten though and he was
invited back to San Mamés in 1959 to receive the club’s Distinguished Member’s
medal. He kicked off a special testimonial game against Chelsea on this
occasion, a feat repeated by his daughter Angela in 2010. His death in 1962 was
commemorated at the San Mamés stadium by a special ceremony reserved solely for
people who have significantly contributed to the Basque culture. His
statue remains at San Mamés to this day.

The high water mark
of his time at Bilbao was a 12-1 win over Barcelona in 1931, the record defeat
ever suffered by the Catalans. This established his footballing philosophy as
the superior one in Spain and was adopted nationwide with Barcelona and Real
Madrid going on to owe much to the influence of El Mister as they dominated
firstly Spanish and then European football.

Sunday, 27 November 2016

The most notable absence from the
oligarchy of clubs which currently dominate European football must be Ajax.
Revered not just for their success from the 70s onwards, but also their tactical
philosophy of total football, the origins of their eminence lie with English
coach Jack Reynolds.

Born in Bury, Reynolds’ playing
career was similar to that of Jimmy Hogan (MWMMF #7), retiring at the age of 30
after spells in and out of the league with the likes of Burton United, Grimsby
Town, Watford and New Brompton (Gillingham Town). Like Hogan he saw a future in
coaching on the continent, starting in 1912 with St. Gallen in Switzerland
where he impressed enough in a two year spell to be appointed German national
manager. Unfortunately this coincided with the outbreak of World War One so he
moved to the Netherlands instead and in 1915 started what was to become the
first of three spells in charge of Ajax Amsterdam spanning 27 years. By 1919 he
had led the club to their first pieces of silverware winning the KNVB (FA) Cup
in 1917 and back to back Eredivisie (League) titles in 1918 and 1919, the
latter being an invincible unbeaten season. Following the armistice he took
charge of the Dutch national team for one match before fellow Englishman Fred
Warburton was appointed on a permanent basis.

He continued at Ajax until 1947,
apart from three years at Blauw Wit in the mid-1920s, and the Nazi occupation
during World War Two when he was interned in a labour camp in Upper Silesia
alongside PG Wodehouse where he arranged international football games between other
prisoners and laid a cricket pitch.

He won five more Eredivisie titles
in the 1930s and an eighth in his final season in charge in 1947. During this
time he laid the foundations for the Total Football system with which Ajax
would rule Europe under Rinus Michels (MWMMF #18 and coached by Reynolds during
the 1940s) in the early 1970s. After his death in 1962 a stand at Ajax’s De
Meer Stadium was named after him and when the Godenzonen moved
to their current home at the Amsterdam Arena, he
was remembered in the Jack Reynolds lobby.

Known by the Dutch as Sjek Rijnols,
his greatest legacy lies not in the trophies won but the coaching philosophy introduced
whereby all age group teams at the club were coached in the same tactics and
style of play. In this way he changed the club forever.

Ajax expert and author Menno Pot said
thathe:

“really reshaped the club into something
professional, even though the players weren't paid at the time. Football was an
amateur game, but he introduced professional training methods, professional
facilities that really allowed Ajax to make a huge leap forward. He was the man
who came up with the idea that every player at Ajax should play the same system
and the same formation. He wanted them to play offensively with skill, rather
than with physical power."

This became the
Ajax tradition which bore such prized fruits in the 1970s that it was seen as
the ideal for all other clubs to aspire to. Today the financial muscle of
Arsenal and Barcelona has allowed them to become its best exponents. If only Ajax
could join them.

Thursday, 17 November 2016

Earlier articles in this series
investigated the stories of men who pioneered the game in South America,
today’s subject Jimmy Hogan, an Englishman of Irish descent, did so in Europe.
Known as the ghost of English football for the way his ball playing philosophy was
rejected in his homeland, he had an enduring influence on the continent,
particularly in Mittel Europa countries such as Austria, Germany, Switzerland
and Hungary.

Born in Burnley, Hogan was initially
destined for the priesthood, but despite graduating from St Bede’s college in
Manchester as head boy at the turn of the century, he elected to pursue a
lifelong career in football.

As a player this amounted to little,
appearing for a number of clubs up to the outbreak of World War One, with his
longest spells coming at Bolton Wanderers and in his hometown of Burnley. On
one occasion he pondered whether his ball skills needed improving but technique
was of no concern to his coach so “From that day I
began to fathom things out for myself, I coupled this with taking advice from
the truly great players. It was through my constant delving into matters that I
became a coach in later life. It seemed the obvious thing, for I had coached
myself as quite a young professional.”

This drive for self-improvement
allied to an adherence to the Scottish philosophy of passing football first
flowered on a summer tour to the Netherlands when having helped Bolton to beat
Dordrecht 10-0 he pledged to “go back
and teach those fellows how to play properly” taking over the Dutch national
team for a short spell which included a memorable 2-1 win over Germany.
This brought him to the attention of Hugo Meisl (MWMMF #5) who took him to
Austria and began to shape the development of the game there. This was halted
by the outbreak of World War One with Hogan being interned as an enemy alien.

Fortunately this was noticed by the
English educated vice president of MTK Budapest, Baron Dirstay, who intervened
to allow Hogan to become coach of the Hungarian club, whose league restarted in
1916, Hogan leading them to back to back titles.

Following the armistice Hogan
returned to England and eagerly approached the FA, keen to share his
continental experience. However he was shunned as a traitor by officials,
suspicious of his apparent disappearance during the war.

After a short time working in a
cigarette factory in Everton, Hogan returned to mainland Europe, this time to
Switzerland where he coached Young Boys Berne and helped prepare the national
team for the 1924 Olympics in Paris, where they reached the final. Following a
short spell with Lausanne he moved over the border with Dresden, lecturing
thousands of German footballers including Helmut Schoen on his footballing
principles. His influence was so great that on his death in 1974 the German Football
Federation secretary Hans Passlack described him as “the father of modern football in Germany”.

In the 1930s Hogan was reunited with
Meisl in Austria and together they created the Wunderteam starring Mathias
Sindelaar becoming, Italy aside, the decade’s pre-eminent European national
side. After a spell coaching Racing Club de Paris, Hogan returned home for good
in 1936 becoming Aston Villa manager, leading them to promotion from Division
Two in his first season. Although he also had spells leading Fulham, Brentford
and Celtic, it was as a coach that he was at his best and at this time he
influenced the early careers of future managerial luminaries Tommy Docherty and
Ron Atkinson.

Always with an eye to learning from
the best, at the age of 71, the now white haired Hogan, took a group of Aston
Villa juniors including Peter McParland, to see England play at Wembley in
1953. The visitors were Hungary who stunned the crowd by inflicting a first
ever home defeat by a score of 6-3 to boot. After the came the Mighty Magyars
coach Gusztáv Sebes (MWMMF #14) commented: “We played football as Jimmy Hogan
taught us. When our football history is told, his name should be written in
gold letters.”

Friday, 4 November 2016

Unlike his predecessors in this
series, Frank Buckley was an innovator in some of the darker arts of the
beautiful game which plague us to this day. On the pitch this was his
development of “English” tactics which reached their apogee in the
all-conquering Wolves team of the 1950s. Off it this was the wheeler dealing
transfer market activity which saw him give priority to the bottom line rather
than the needs of the team.

Know commonly as the Major due to
his military service in World War One, Buckley was born to a military family in
Urmston, Lancashire in 1882. He won a scholarship to St Francis Xavier's
College for Boys in Liverpool which was run using the philosophy of
Muscular Christanity cherished by some of his predecessors in this series.

Following his father into a career
in the army, he was spotted by Aston Villa playing football for his regiment
and decided to buy himself out of the army to sign a professional contract. He
went onto play for Brighton, Manchester City and United, Birmingham and Derby,
winning an England cap whilst at the latter, shortly before war broke out in
1914.

Buckley became the first to sign up
for the Football Battalion, rising to the rank of Major by the time they
reached the front in 1916. His football career was effectively ended by an
injury sustained at the Battle of the Somme, but he returned to the front in
1917 and was was "mentioned in dispatches" for the bravery shown
during hand-to-hand fighting.

Following the Armistice, Buckley was
appointed manager of Southern League Norwich, creating a nationwide scouting
network of his former army comrades who were all ex-players, to build a team of
talented young players. He resigned in 1920 following a dispute with the board
and then spent time out of the game as a sweet salesman.

He returned to football in 1923 as
Blackpool instantly making his mark by changing their kit to the distinctive
tangerine well known to this day. As well as buying young talent which he would
sell for a generous fee safe in the knowledge of a replacement already lined
up, Buckley put paramount importance on the physical fitness of his squad. He
combined diet (including a smoking ban) with physiotherapy as well as novel
fitness routines such as weight training. Having established a reputation for
building an effective squad which could be milked to provide a healthy profit,
Buckley was appointed manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1927.

Buckley's stay at Wolves can be
taken two ways. On the face of it, he appeared to achieve only modest success
with the club; they won theDivision Twotitle in1931–32and finished runners-up in theDivision Onein1937–38and in both the First Division and theFA Cupthe following season. An alternative view is that
during his stay atMolineux, Buckley
once made the club a £100,000 profit within one year, purely on transfer deals;
he toyed, provocatively, with the media (instigating the empty rumour that his
players were using a monkey gland treatment to aid performance), he used
psychologists to instil confidence in his players and was responsible for
bringing through Stan Cullis and offeringBilly Wrighta start in
professional football. After he had
left the club, however, the full value of his vision, not least the Wolves
youth programme, came to fruition and did so much to shape the Wolves side of
the 1950s, when they won three Division One championships, twice won the FA
Cup, and were one of few genuine challengers to theBusby Babes.

His impact can be summed up by
Cullis who went onto manage Wolves through their 1950s golden era: "I soon realised that Major Buckley was one out
of the top drawer. He did notsuffer
fools gladly. His style of management in football was very similar to his
attitude in the army. Major Buckley implanted into my mind the direct method of
playing which did away with close interpassing and square-ball play. If you
didn't like his style you'd very soon be on your bicycle to another club. He
didn't like defenders over-elaborating in their defensive positions. Major
Buckley also knew how to deal with the press."

Buckley left Moulineux towards the end of the second
world war and with his scouting network showing his age, made little impact at
his final few short appointments at Notts County, Hull City, Leeds United and
Walsall. He did sign Jack Charlton for the Whites though and started a process
of youth development that would bear fruit in
the Revie era.

This reflected his major
contribution to the English game, that of talent development and profit, with a
focus on physical fitness and simple, direct football. A
blueprint for the mercantile nature of the modern game in this country,
undoubtedly successful but forsaking the emotional tug of attractive football
and glorious success measured by silverware.

Thursday, 20 October 2016

As a middling European nation,
Austria have never touched the heights of peers such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia
or Netherlands at club or national level, however this might have been very
different but for the rise of Nazism which destroyed the great Austrian
Wunderteam of the 1930s created by Hugo Meisl.

Meisl was born in Bohemia in 1881
and after moving to Vienna in his youth initially pursued a career in banking
but switched to work for the Austrian Football Association, after becoming a
top class referee, officiating internationals and at the 1912 Olympics.

As an administrator he pioneered the
establishment of professional league football in Austria in the early 1920s and
also created the Mitropa Cup, one of the first international competitions for
club sides in Central Europe which lasted until 1992, and the Central European
International Cup for national teams. These competitions were effectively the
forerunners of the Champions League and the Euros.

Appointed coach of the Austrian
national team in 1913, and assuming full control in 1919, Meisl was also an innovator
on the pitch, working with other men who made modern football such as Herbert
Chapman (#4), Vitorio Pozzo (#10) and Jimmy Hogan (#7). Working closely with
the latter, he was keen to keep the ball on the ground encouraging crisp
passing. Using the successful Scots team as their template, what followed has
been cited as the first example of total football which Austrian Ernst Happel
(#20) exported to the Netherlands in the 1960s.

As the 1920s drew to a close Austria
became the pre-eminent European team and in a twenty month period from April
1931 went on a fourteen match unbeaten run which included winning the Central
European International Cup with a 4-2 win over Italy. This run also featured
the first ever win by a non-British team over the Scots who had earlier been
Meisl’s source of inspiration.

Fielding one of the leading players
in the world, Mathias Sindelaar, known as the paper man (Die Papierene) for his
slight appearance which saw him ghost through challenges, Austria were
naturally favourites to win the first World Cup to be played in Europe in 1934
in Italy.

A tough quarter-final win over
rivals Hungary, came at the cost of losing Johann Horvarth to injury. They then
faced a determined host nation in the semi-final who took an early lead, and
then desperately held on to it on a heavy pitch which hampered the Austrians’
passing game. The Italians won the match 1-0 and went on to win the Cup by
beating Czechoslovakia 2-1. Austria finished fourth having lost the play off to
Germany 3-2.

Two years later Meisl took his team
one step further to the Olympic final in Germany. In the run up to the 1936
games, Austria became only the fifth non British team to beat isolationist
England with a 2-1 win in Vienna. At the finals a quarter-final defeat by Peru
was annulled by the head of the host state, Adolf Hitler, which led to the
Peruvians’ withdrawal. Italy again proved to be Austria’s nemesis, winning the
final 2-1, the runners up spot remaining Austria’s best achievement to date.

Meisl died in 1937, and within a year his Wunderteam had been
broken up by the Nazis in the wake of the Anschluss. After qualifying for the
1938 World Cup in France, the country was annexed by Germany in March and
within two weeks the Austrian FA was abolished, with Germany now representing
the whole territory at the finals as FIFA accepted Austria’s withdrawal. The
Austrian team were all eligible for selection for Germany but were given one
last outing in a “reunification” derby. This was supposed to finish in a draw
but wearing a special red and white kit to assert their national identity the
Austrians eased to a win with two late Sindelaar goals. Having celebrated
vigorously in front of the watching Nazi leaders, Sindelaar went on to
deliberately miss a further chance. He further demonstrated his refusal to bow
to fascism by refusing to play for the new national team and was found dead in
mysterious circumstances in 1939. He was voted Austria’s Sportsman of the
century in 2000.

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

At the end of a week when not only
Arsene Wenger’s 20 year reign at Arsenal is being celebrated, but also many of
his English peers are in the dock for their shortcomings on and off the pitch,
it’s a relief to reflect on the life of an Englishman who as well as turning
Arsenal into a leading English club, was also an iconoclast who was involved in
many innovations which soon became common practice and tradition.

As every fan should know he created
not one but two teams at two different clubs which won three English titles in
consecutive years. Great enough to compare to Liverpool and Manchester United’s
similar feats in modern times, but greater still when you consider Huddersfield
Town and Arsenal had won nothing when he arrived at Leeds Road and Highbury
respectively.

Tactical innovation was at the heart
of this success, which as well as the radical W-M formation, extended to
fitness, kit design, marketing and the colour of the ball. All this from a man
who despite a modest playing career, created the concept of the manager as we
know it today.

The son of a Yorkshire coal miner,
Chapman’s intellect gained him a place at Sheffield Technical College studying
mining engineering. Aptly for a sporting family, he was one of eleven children,
with his younger brother Harry winning the League and Cup for The Wednesday. An
inside right, Herbert had a long route to the top, starting out in the Kiveton
Park Colliery youth team before moving into the Lancashire League. A brief
spell with elder brother Tommy at Grimsby Town was followed by a return to non
league football. The precarious balance between developing his career off the
pitch and maintaining his progress on it meant he switched between amateur and
professional status with Sheffield United and Notts County, and at the age of
29 eventually decided to finish his playing career to pursue his career in
engineering, after ending the 1906/07 season with Southern League Tottenham
Hotspur.

However before the summer was out he
was tempted back into the game as player-manager of Northampton who had
finished the previous season bottom of the Southern League. Reflecting that "No
attempt was made to organise victory.", and "a team can attack for too long", Chapman
set out about to create a radical counter attacking system, withdrawing half
backs (midfielders) to create space for his forwards. Signing players to suit
the system, Northampton were Southern League champions in 1909 but could not
move up to the two division Football League. Naturally Chapman proposed the
Football League expand by two divisions but this did not happen until 1920. In
the meantime Chapman returned to his native Yorkshire to manage Leeds City.

Arriving at Elland Road in 1912 with
the club facing re-election to Football League Division Two, Chapman took Leeds
to fourth place in the final season before World War One. For the duration of
hostilities Chapman worked in a munitions factory and following the armistice
decided to formally resign from the club and take a job in the mining industry.
Unfortunately when the league resumed in 1919, an accusation of financial
irregularities by a former player was met with a blunt refusal from Leeds to
comply with the resulting investigation and they were expelled from the league,
Chapman receiving a life ban along with other club officials.

The ban was eventually overturned,
given Chapman was not at the club when the charges were made, and following
redundancy, returned to football as assistant manager at Huddersfield Town in
1921. Within a month Chapman took over as manager, introducing his tactics of
strong defence and fast counter attack, signing players to fit the system
including wingers who were instructed to make passes which split the defensive
line, rather than heading for the byline and cutting the ball back. Little more
than a year later Huddersfield had won their first major trophy by beating
Preston North End at Stamford Bridge to win the 1922 FA Cup.

Using a complex scouting network to
further improve his squad, the Terriers won their first league title in 1924
which they successfully defended in 1925 but before they made it three in a
row, Chapman had moved to North London.

Arsenal chairman Henry Norris was an
ambitious man, having already moved the Gunners from Woolwich to Highbury, and
inveigled them into Division One. He doubled Chapman’s salary and allowed him
to sign Charlie Buchan, one of the leading strikers of the era. With the
offside law changing to the current one in the summer of 1925, Chapman fined
tuned his tactics to create the WM formation, a 3-4-3 structure, the centre
half now withdrawn into defence along the two full backs, two inside forwards
joining the two remaining half backs in midfield. This was in stark contrast to
the conventional 2-3-5.

As ever Chapman found himself with
the job of transforming a team used to the wrong end of the table and as always
he had an instant impact, Arsenal finishing a best ever second to triple title
winners Huddersfield. Twelve months later the Gunners reached Wembley only to
lose the FA Cup Final to Cardiff. This coincided with the club becoming
embroiled in a financial scandal which led to Norris being banned and
subsequently allowed Chapman more control at the club. The next two seasons saw
Chapman carefully build his team with judicious signings, including David Jack
from Bolton at a reduced price after Chapman slowly inebriated the Trotters’
directors whilst he drank alcohol free gin and tonic.

Arsenal reached Wembley again in
1930, and as Huddersfield were the opponents Chapman suggested that both teams
walk out together, another first which we will see again today. Arsenal won the
Cup and in 1931 added to their first ever trophy with a league title. They won
three in a row from 1932-5, another Cup in 1936 and the league again in 1938,
so that by the end of the decade they were firmly established with the status
they hold today as one of the leading English clubs.

Sadly Chapman did not live to see
all of this success, dying of pneumonia in January 1934, having cast the die
for the club’s future. As well as creating a strict training regime focused on
fitness, using professional physiotherapists and masseurs, he advocated white
footballs, numbers on shirts, and changed Arsenal’s kit to a brighter red with
white sleeves and blue hooped socks, all to sharpen focus on teammates and the
ball. Off the pitch he installed floodlights, the Arsenal clock and scoreboard,
designed new turnstiles, and renamed Gillespie Road underground station, all to
attract more support.

Whilst at Northampton he had signed
black player Walter Tull, and would have signed European players for Arsenal
had he not been blocked by the FA. He organised friendlies against teams from
the continent and made contact with some of his foremost foreign peers.

Insisting on having sole control of
team affairs, unlike the selection committees at other clubs, Chapman
introduced a weekly team meeting to facilitate discussion of tactics amongst
his players, and team building activities such as golf days. Although his team
were knocked as “Lucky” or “Boring” for their economical but ruthless use of
possession, they could fairly be described as free scoring with as many as 127
goals in the first title season of 1931, perhaps in the style of Leicester
City’s 2015 league winners.

He left the club top of the league despite
having already started to rebuild his successful squad to ensure their
dominance would remain until it was interrupted by World War Two. The biggest
tribute though came in November 1934 when a record breaking seven of his
Arsenal team were selected to play for England against world champions Italy at
Highbury. Needless to say England won 3-2.

Sunday, 25 September 2016

As explained in part 2 it was in Argentina that football
first took root in South America. Inevitably Brazil was not far behind and
again it was Scotsmen who played the leading role in developing perhaps the
world’s foremost footballing nation.

The predictable title of father of Brazilian football is
commonly attached to Charles Miller (pictured above) and as you will read he
certainly played the biggest role in establishing the sport. However it is
Thomas Donohoe, originally from Busby in East Renfrewshire, who organised the
first match.

A dye expert, Donohoe arrived in Bangu, a suburb of Rio De
Janeiro in 1893. In April the following year he organised a five a side match.
Aged 31 he became part of a small British community in the neighbourhood but missed
playing football so when he invited his wife and children to cross the Atlantic
he asked them to bring a football which was then used in the first football
match to be played in Brazil on a field next to the textile factory where
worked, with the British factory workers making up the teams.

Sadly a manager at the factory banned all games for fear of a
detrimental effect on the workforce. Thus the fledgling game in Bangu was still
born and football did not return for ten years but they still continued to
innovate as in 1905 the new Bangu Atletic Clube included Francisco Carregal,
the first black player to play for a Brazilian club.

Thus it was left to Charles Miller, based a few hours down
the coast in Sao Paulo, to establish the first league having arranged the first
eleven a side match in Brazil in 1894, a few month after Donohoe.

Miller was a Sao Paulo native with a Scottish railway
engineer father, and a Brazilian mother of English descent. He was sent to
Southampton to complete his education, and whilst at school he played for and
against Corinthians and St. Marys, the clubs now known as Corinthian Casuals
and Southampton respectively.

Miller returned to Brazil, aged 21 in 1894, bringing with him
two footballs and the Hampshire FA rule book. In April 1895 he organised a
match between British workers of the Sao Paulo Railway and the Gas Company,
acknowledged as the first proper football match to be played in Brazil as
opposed to Donohoe’s small sided affair. He went onto set up the Liga Paulista
and the Sao Paulo Athletic Club for whom he featured as a striker and won three
consecutive championships from 1902. To this day the state championship remains
the foundation of the Brazilian game.

The club had folded for good by 1912 but he left his mark on
Brazilian football by suggesting the name Corinthians for another Sport Club
Paulista. Corinthians remain one of the foremost clubs in world football.

Other notable figures in early Brazilian football include
Oscar Cox and Harry Welfare. Cox was born in Brazil but as his surname suggests
had English ancestors. He introduced football to Rio De Janeiro and founded
Fluminese. He learned his football whilst being educated in Switzerland, and
like Miller, returned aged 20 in 1901to set up the first match in his native
city. Hearing about Miller’s efforts in Sao Paulo, Cox went on to set up
fixtures featuring teams from each city.
In 1902 he founded Flu, a club Welfare would go on to star for as a
striker.

Born in Liverpool,
Welfare played professionally for both the Reds and Tranmere but aged 24
decided to emigrate to Brazil. A teacher, Welfare joined Fluminese and went
onto score 163 goals in only 166 appearances. After a decade of service he was
elected a life member of the club.

Sunday, 11 September 2016

Watching the 1986 World Cup Final I
was struck by the surname of the first Argentinian goalscorer. It was Brown,
and as I found out when researching this article thirty years later, his name
is evidence of the lasting influence of Scotland on the development on one of
the world’s footballing super powers and indeed the South American continent’s
football as a whole.

This is hardly surprising when you
consider the influence of the British empire on that part of South America in
the nineteenth century and I think it’s rather appropriate given the
footballing relationship between Argentina and England, that it was men from
the auld enemy Scotland who built the foundation for La Albiceleste, chiefly a
man from the Gorbals, Alexander Watson-Hutton.

Destined to become known as the
father of Argentinian football, Hutton, the son of a grocer was orphaned before
he reached the age of five. Incredibly he graduated from the University of
Edinburgh with a degree in Philosophy and found his vocation as a teacher. The
earlier death of close family members from Tuberculosis, colloquially known as
consumption, is thought to have led to his desire to seek a new life in warmer
climes, so aged 31, in 1884 he began an appointment as rector of St Andrews
School in Buenos Aires, which had been founded by the first wave of Scottish immigrants
in 1838 and still exists today.

Hutton was an adherent of muscular Christianity, the belief
that sport, especially as part of a team, has spiritual value. His preferred
form of sporting expression was association football which was initially at
odds with his fellow expatriates’ preference for rugby. When it became clear
that the presence of football on the curriculum of his school was unwelcome, he
elected to resign and found his own institution, the English High School of
Buenos Aires which quickly flourished.

With football now at the heart of the curriculum, Hutton
persuaded William Waters, the son of his old landlady back in Scotland to join
him and bring a bag of leather footballs. ‘Guillermo’ Waters went onto become a
successful importer of sporting goods to South America but before that
captained St Andrews Scotch Athletic Club to the Argentine Association Football
League title, the first such competition to be held outside of the UK.

The team consisted entirely of Scots, as did runners up the
Old Caledonians which predominantly featured employees of a British plumbing
company, Bautaume & Peason, which was laying a new sewage system in Buenos
Aires. The league soon collapsed but it was Hutton who re-established in it
1893, a body regarded as South America’s first national football association,
the eighth oldest in the world. Hutton was President and refereed games.

When the Argentinian government made PE compulsory in all
schools in 1898, football spread in popularity amongst the native population.
Hutton founded the Club Atletico English High School for his pupils, ex-pupils
and teachers, and joined the new second division of the Argentinian League.
Over the next decade, Alumni as they were known, dominated the national game
winning ten first division titles between 1900 and 1911. A star member of the
team was Hutton’s son Arnold, better known as Arnoldo who not only became an
international footballer but also represented Argentina at cricket and polo.

Another Gorbals boy, tea magnate Thomas Lipton gave Hutton
junior a chance for more glory when he donated the Copa Lipton, a trophy to be
played for annually between Argentina and Uruguay, Arnoldo scoring in the
second game in 1907 which Argentina won 2-0. In 1910 the competition was
expanded to include Chile, and renamed the Copa Centenario to commemorate the
1810 Argentinian revolution. Arnoldo scored in the final again as Argentina
lifted the trophy that was in time to become the Copa America.

Alumni’s strength was augmented by seven members of the Brown
family, whose ancestors had left Scotland as early as 1825. Five of the Browns
also won regular caps for Argentina but in 1912 Hutton decided to disband
Alumni. This marked the end of the British period of Argentinian football,
giving way to futbol criollo, the indigenous population setting up more
familiar clubs such as Boca Juniors and River Plate.

Hutton died in 1936, just six years after Argentina had
finished runners up to Uruguay in the first World Cup final. His role in the
early development of the South American game is not forgotten with the
Argentinian FA’s library being named after him and a 1950 film, Escuela de
Campeones commemorating the story of his great Alumni team to celluloid.

The Scottish and by definition Hutton’s influence continues
to be represented in Argentinian Football with 1986 goalscorer Jose Brown being
a directed descendant of the Caledonian pioneers. Following his retirement he
has become a successful domestic coach. If it wasn’t for Hutton’s persistence
perhaps it would have been as a rugby player that Brown would have found fame.

Monday, 29 August 2016

On thinking about a series of programme
articles to span the season I ended up channelling Rudyard Kipling via CLR
James viz “what do they know of Maidenhead United who only Maidenhead United
know”, and helped by a subscription to the Blizzard, have decided to write twenty
five thumbnail sketches of footballing innovators who have had a lasting impact
on the global game.

I begin the series with a man who
has become known as not just someone with a lasting influence on modern
football, but is also described as the “father of modern sport”, Charles W
Alcock. This is fair comment given he had a hand in the first FA Cup, the first
football international, the creation of cricket’s county championship and the
first test match between England and Australia which of course in time became
The Ashes. He was not just an administrator but a player and tactician of a
note years before the concept of the manager coach became an established role.

Born in Sunderland in 1842, he moved
to Chingford at an early age, being educated at Harrow, the famous footballing
public school. Eschewing the family shipbroking business he became a sports
reporter and looked to carry on his playing career as a centre forward by
forming The Wanderers in 1862, a club created for Harrow old boys. A year later
the Football Association was created with Alcock joining the committee in 1866,
publishing the first ever football annual two years later. He was appointed FA Secretary
in 1870, making his mark by organising the first international match between England
and Scotland in March of that year, captaining England at Kennington Oval in a
1-1 draw against the Scots.

This was the first of five games
leading up to what FIFA have since recognised as the first official
international which was played at the West of Scotland cricket ground in Partick,
Glasgow in November 1872, the earlier matches being discounted as the Scotland
team were all London based and selected by the English FA!

In the meantime in 1871 Alcock
proposed:

'That it is desirable
that a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the
Association, for which all clubs belonging to the Association should be invited
to compete'

Based on Alcock’s experience of
inter-house knockout football at Harrow, this turned into the world’s first
national football tournament, the FA Cup, with Maidenhead and Marlow two of the
fifteen clubs which entered the first competition. Alcock went onto captain The
Wanderers to victory in the first ever FA Cup Final, beating Royal Engineers
1-0. Following retirement, Alcock refereed the 1875 and 1879 finals.

Alcock was as much an organiser on
the pitch as off it. Having become in 1866 the first player to be penalised
under the new offside law, he went onto become a leading advocate of the
“combination” (i.e. passing) game which advocated teamwork especially defence
linking with attack. This had been developed by the Sheffield club formed in
1857 and reflected Alcock’s lack of class prejudice. Unlike many of his former
school mates who sought to denigrate the status of professional clubs like
Sheffield from the north who favoured team work, in favour of individualistic
amateur clubs who saw football as self-expression with players taking it in
turns to make solo runs, Alcock argued that professionalism in sport was not a
problem, rather that shamateurism or in his words “veiled professionalism is
the evil to be repressed”.

Alcock continued as FA Secretary
until 1895, combining the role with that of secretary of Surrey County Cricket
Club. It was in this latter role that he organised the first England v
Australia test match in the northern hemisphere in 1880 and formalised the
County Championship in 1890.

The FA Cup, international football
and professionalism, the first two suggested by Alcock and the latter strongly
supported by him in the face of wholesale opposition from his peers, prove him
most surely to be a man who made modern football.